Really cool game with great execution ! I like the music, the gameplay was fun, my two cents on this would be on the UX level, I think it would have been nicer to start a battle right after selecting a quest !

Keep up the good work !

I love how fun it is to get new weapons. Only thing i wish is the game would get harder over time, but it was just the same enemies that my 4 special katanas minced in 2 turns haha. Loved it, great work.

Awesome game! I really appreciate amazing pixel art in games, and this one nailed it. I loved the customization system for the swords and love the variety, although the gameplay turned a little repetitive since the difficulty didn't scale as much. I managed to max out my swords pretty quickly and the replayability wasn't giving me that much of a reward since I had already collected all of the swords. Still, I'm sure the future updates for the game will turn this into an amazing roguelike with tons of different swords and new effects that will entretain us for hours on end!

An isekai sword autobattler, wild lol. And no engine? This game is full of surprises! It's a  really beautiful game, and the sword building feels really good. It's easy to feel powerful very quickly, and collecting parts feels really addicting. My only criticism would be that some of the sound effects were out of sync for me? A very minor critique, truly. Great game!

There are so many swords! And I like the designs. Collecting them was pretty fun. I’m not sure if the battles are supposed to get challenging at some point, lol, it kept just putting me up against one weak-ass sword even when I had 5 good ones. Cool concept!

This game is great. I was addicted and obsessed with getting a full bagette sword. I did not succeed because I need to move on to play some other game jam games, but I think you got an hour of my life with this game, which is crazy for a gamejam game.

This game has a lot of potential. I think there could be improvements:

Giving the player the ability to access the stats of each sword and give a better explanation of what the powers do. The only way I figured out to get any understanding of the stats was to check when selling items in the shop.

There is also a few timing issues. Sometimes swords would die before the attack animation, other times there would be a delay in them dying.

The attack and damage animations could be juiced more.

I found the smith screen and the army screen too similar and sometimes mixed up what screen I was on.

I also would love to see where the story goes.

Still this is my favorite game I've played this game jam by far. Good luck!

This is awesome! Great work! :D

The game is really fun! Even now while writing this review, I still have the game open and am trying to get more swords. It is one of the more complete games I have tested so far, I will start off with the good stuff, before moving on to what’s bad and some ideas.

What I liked

Firstly, I really liked the relaxing BGM as well as the sound effects for many things, such as button clicks, the dice rolling etc. Only thing I would change is exchanging the Upgrade Sword sound effect with the money gained sound effect after a battle. The sound effect played when the coins fly off the screen sounds a lot like hammers on an anvil, which I feel would fit the Smithy more.

I really loved the variety of swords and the fact that you can combine different parts of it to make different swords. This adds endless content, as you simply need to add more parts and you’ll have a larger and larger variety each time. The enchanted and unique variations only serve to add even more variety to the already huge variety.

The general art style of the game is really nice, I love how detailed the rocks at the bottom of the game looks. I love the background moving slowly, and the swords dancing around while you sit at the menu (especially the baguette). I also liked how the sky colour matches the itch page’s background so it blends in at some parts. The UI also looks really clean. For the most part, the art seems like something I would expect from a fully completed game, not a 2 week prototype.

The core gameplay loop is really fun, the ability to expand your army, fight different enemies, test different sword combinations makes the game fun for quite awhile. Though there are definitely areas to expand on here, which undoubtedly would have taken longer than 2 weeks.

Bugs and what could be improved

Let’s start with a minor one first, opening the settings menu while in the initial starting dialogue causes the chat box to be half covering the Settings menu.

At the quest board, when I accept a quest, it simply disappears. There is no clear way to re-view the quest I accepted. A quest list, or a “Accepted quest” popup would be helpful in telling me I have the quest. Also something which I don’t know is intended or not, but the dancing swords are hidden behind the quest board. I feel it would look better being in front of it, considering it would only cover the bottom-most part, and with how the quest board doesn’t have any updated visuals upon accepting a quest, it seems like it would be fine being in front.

When battling, I initially didn’t know what the dice roll meant, but understood that it was the turn order pretty soon after. When the sword attacked, there was no visual or audio feedback for how much damage is dealt or which sword got hit. A damage indicator and an animation on the sword that got hit would be a good way to display this. I also don’t understand the chest I have to click on at the end, as all it currently does is make the “Back to town” button show up. Is the sword piece supposed to come out of it instead of already being displayed above it?

For the Smith area, when I first started the game, I was very confused on what each part actually does, when clicking on the parts, or even upgrading the swords, it does not display what stats it gives and whether it was an upgrade or downgrade. A tooltip or stat display would really help. Initially, I actually thought the “None” sword was a type of sword and replaced parts of a sword with it to test if it would give better stats. I’m not sure if this is intended, but the sword dancing in the menu does not update if a weapon is upgraded in the Smith area, it only updates if I return from a battle.

Similarly, for the Army area, there is also no way to see each sword’s stats. I can’t tell which sword is better or worse without swapping it into my army, going in battle to test it out and potentially losing. Also, I can’t tell if the placement of the sword affects anything, if it does, a hint would help. If it does not, it might be worth removing the option of swapping sword order around.

The swords have different upgrades like Pierce, Heavy, Cleaving, Reckless, Vicious. But I have no idea what it actually does. Some of them I can kind of guess, like cleaving might hit multiple enemies, heavy might roll a lower die but do more damage etc. But I feel a way to display these stats would be good.

Lastly the shop, for some odd reason, I could not sell any item at all if my inventory was full. I also realised later on that this was the only place I could see the stats of individual parts of the sword, but I still couldn’t see the stats of a fully completed one.

Earning coins feels a bit too easy currently, making powerful items like the Katana upgrade almost trivial to buy early on.

Some ideas and suggestions

Considering you had inspiration from Tinker’s construct and Super Auto Pets, both of which I have played and experienced before, I feel that you could split the sword more. Currently, the sword is split into the hilt and blade, but I feel you could do it like in Tinker’s construct, whereby you split it into handle, guard and blade. This gives your game more variety, and you can split the current hilt assets into two parts.

In super auto pets, position matters because each pet has a unique ability to affect neighboring pets. If sword order matters here (for buffs or combos), consider showing when these abilities might trigger.

A way to gauge the quest difficulty would be great. As the more I play the game, the easier it gets for me to recognise the silhouettes of the different swords and gauge how hard the battle will be. But when first starting out, I feel it’s pretty hard to tell when you’re going against a tough battle, as you simply see “Hunt 1 Sword”, but it could easily be a 20/20 sword. Either a way to display that the enemy is too hard for you, or a general difficulty of the enemy would be good.

A way to use up the extra sword souls you have after you get a full inventory would be good, maybe to exchange for coins. The shop would also do well with a way to refresh the current stock, maybe for a cost of coins.

Last but not least, I’m obligated to ask for more Bread swords. Please also buff the baguette.

Other than a couple hitches here and there that are clearly from the time crunch, this was a surprisingly engaging piece. I'd have loved some damage numbers, the ability to see what the effects do, the ability to see what the effects do on the same screen as applying them to a weapon, those sorts of things. But even without those, I played til I had 15 blades. Just a REALLY engaging premise.

For some reason, I am spending at least half an hour with this game and I don't really know why... Jokes aside, this is an interesting little game. On the one hand, the game has a lot of places needed improvement, but on the other hand, it's very additive.

Anyway, for some criticism, the stats never progress, and thus changing builds is not really necessary. This is really a shame because it is what this game is actually about (customising swords). The game also feels quite slow due to a lot of button presses required to start a battle, which includes finding a quest to fight (which is 2 clicks per quest), going back and pressing start battle, the is also a slight delay between the hitting animation and actually deducing health, etc. The hurts the pacing quite a bit and I am sure there are ways to mitigate it.

Anyway, this is still a solid entry and as I have said at the very first part of this comment, I am really enjoying myself with this game, so I'd say its a job well done!

This was very neat! I love the concept, and making swords was versatile and fun. Well done!

We demand multiplayer!
We means me.. ):

The pixel art in this game is beautiful. I love the background, and especially the clouds. The swords also look powerful and awesome! In the sound department, the music helps to give a relaxed feel to the game while the sound effects help with immersion. 

Regarding the menus, the mechanics of each one of them is explained well! 

The story is emotional, and the sword collecting aspect that follows it is quite interesting! I spent close to an hour fighting and collecting parts, making a sword army that satisfied me. I really liked the fact that we can find parts that already come with beneficial effects, and that we can put an aura on these parts without substituting the effect that came with the piece. Really makes you feel like that sword is  s t a c k e d  up.

The others have said a lot of the things that I'd say, like having floating damage numbers when dealing/receiving a hit, in-game descriptions of effects, among other things. It's interesting to think of things that could be implemented in the future, though. Maybe quests with boss battle-ish sword fights? 

Also, I played this game on my phone, and it worked perfectly. This game is really really solid. I enjoyed my sword-collecting experience. Good work!

This is how my collection looked by the end. I'm a big fan of the bread "dagger", myself. It's not very good during battle, though...

It was a fun game with cool swords! Sometimes, when you're upgrading, the exit button goes off the screen, like when you add something to the upgrade

Looks great and I like the autobattler mechanics, but I encountered two issues:
- After a while my inventory was full and I couldn't sell anything in the shop, even after saving and reloading it wouldn't sell any of my items, which also meant I couldn't buy anything (web build, Firefox)
- A lot of the keywords would benefit from a tooltip, or a manual that tells you what they do. As funny as "delicious" is as a trait for a sword, I have no idea how it affects my build

Combining swords is very satisfying. Also, I am very impressed that your team managed to put together a wiki page. On a side note, I feel like this would be considered racism in the world of swords, just saying.

love it + addictive lol

I wonder if you know those adventure quest games, I got those good vibes playing this game. The mix-and-match mechanics of the swords was a superb idea, it was very fun getting to collect all the parts and discover new weapons. I did have one issue with the shop being unable to sell parts at one point, which seemed to fix itself when I came back to the shop later. I would like a more detailed description (in-game) of what each attribute does. I think quests board should have an easier list to view (and perhaps the base reward offered) so we can select quests better - it's a bit tedious to open each one and guess which is the best quest to take. The chest animation at the end of battle was nice, although I think the drop reward should show up just after the animation plays (a bit more immersive that way). My favorite animation in the game was probably the lantern 😁. For the sword animations, watching them rotate and scale was a nice touch - I'm impressed you could do that with engineless without hurting the details of the pixels. My mouse used to play the game has a back button, and I accidentally hit it - and that took me away from the game page 🤣but fortunately the game saves the progress. There were a few loading issues where the game screen was black with the music playing, had to refresh a couple times for it to load. But anyway, I had a lot of fun and this was an awesome take on the theme! I wrote a lot of feedback, hopefully it will be useful to you for your future games!!

Can't wait to see what you'll make next, well done!!

Hey ! The gameplay loop was nice and i spent some time playing the game :) It could benefit from a bit more introduction on the fight, and maybe improve UI a little bit to make it clearer. I also had a bug, where i could not buy or sell anything after playing for a while. Overall, it was a fun game to play, congrats !